It's a Long Walk Home
by usedusernames
Summary: Set during season 6. Sam and Bobby's relationship hasn't repaired itself since Sam was soulless. An unexpected hunter looking to kill Sam might be the thing to put it back together. Canon-typical violence.


A/N: Written for a prompt on Oh! Sam on Livejournal: Season 6. Gen. Bobby and Sam bonding. With Dean away taking care of a hunt. It's left Sam and Bobby to themselves in his house. Of course Bobby is still angry/afraid of Sam due to what soulless!Sam tried to do. However, that all changes when an old hunter pays a visit to the junkyard, apparently he's heard the stories about Sam and decides to 'help' by taking care of him while Bobby and Sam are asleep.

* * *

Dean was gone when Sam woke up.

There was a note on the coffee table in front of Bobby's couch where he'd passed out the night before. His own name, scratched in big dark capital letters **SAM** was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes. He didn't need to read more than that.

Dean had gone hunting. Alone.

That maybe wasn't noteworthy under normal circumstances, but Sam knew why it was Dean had left him behind. He knew that Dean was scared of the wall inside his head falling to pieces. Was scared that the next time Sam began seizing on the floor as Hell overtook him, he wouldn't get up after.

Dean didn't feel it. He didn't know it wasn't just some blocked off place in Sam's head that he was blissfully ignorant to anymore. The truth was that-no matter what Death said- it wasn't even a wall.

It was a dam.

And maybe Sam had been the one to spring the leak by digging too much in Rhode Island, but he was also the one to stick his finger in the hole. Dean didn't know what it was like to use a finger to hold back the flood.

Sam let out a sharp exhalation. He spitefully didn't want to read the note, but he was hardly so angry with Dean that he wouldn't know everything about the hunt that he could.

Going to Boulder CO. Back in a few days.

Real helpful, Dean, Sam thought bitterly.

"See you know your brother's gone," Bobby's voice came from behind him.

As though he wouldn't have known right away.

Sam's glower deepened. It wasn't directed at Bobby, not really, but Dean wasn't there to take it.

Bobby was. He stood in silence and gathered up the rage in Sam's eyes as it spilled out on his living room floor. For just a moment it struck him as walking into a room housing vengeful spirit might have, and his blood ran cold enough to goosebump his skin. He took a breath and shook it off.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"No," Sam answered sullenly.

The way his jaw was working said otherwise. Bobby shifted his feet to get comfortable for the wait.

When it came to spilling their guts to Bobby, the boys gossiped about each other like they were school children and the other had just broken their favorite toy.

It wasn't like he minded. It was just that Bobby was pretty damned sure it was his fault; they'd spent years with John's voice in one ear telling them to squash their petty differences and in the other ear the voice of Uncle Bobby saying 'tell me what's the matter'. It didn't take a shrink for him to toss out a guess or two about these kids' complexes.

Sure enough a moment later Sam shouted, "He doesn't trust me!"

As though it was contagious, Bobby felt a flare of anger all his own. He bought himself a second's silence by adjusting his his hat. "Now, that's not true, Sam."

"He doesn't trust me," Sam repeated without acknowledging Bobby's words. He breathed out a mirthless huff of laughter. The anger had waned only to be replaced by something new. Sam's eyes were as big and sad and open as a child looking for its mother in a supermarket. A third time, said often enough now that it had been stripped raw, he began, "He doesn't trust me to decide what to do with my own brain. My own thoughts. My own memories. He can't hold my own brain hostage from me, Bobby. He can't just give me my soul back and tell me not to use it to fix what I did."

Bobby's second bout of anger took them both by surprise:

"Well can you blame him? Maybe there ain't no fixing what you did!"

They both stood stock-still for seconds that stretched out long.

When Bobby continued it was a strange mix of sincerity and a wild attempt at backpedaling that neither of them could quite pull apart. "What I mean is, not one month ago you had a knife to my neck. Now, you weren't all there, but you really want to go putzing around with the one thing that made you all there?"

Bobby sighed. "Look, Sam, the truth is..." Shook his head. "That thing in your head, whatever it is you got in there, is like a spoilt egg. Whatever comes out is gonna be rotten. And here you are, itchin' to break it."

:-:-:

Two men had watched the Impala drive out that day with no one riding shotgun.

The first man was Bobby himself, standing in front of his house.

"Sam's going to be pissed to hell when he wakes up and you ain't here."

Dean had slapped his palms flat down on the hood.

"Good! Fine! Let him be. I've lost that kid too many times. I'm not doing it again. Not because of this. Not this."

Bobby sighed, throwing his hand up partway. "Awright," he said, and that was that. They'd had this conversation too many times for him to bother with it again at 5 A.M..

The door to the Impala was on its way to a slam before Dean remembered that the point of leaving so early was for Sam to stay asleep.

It was getting harder to tell which of the boys was angrier these days.

Bobby shook his head and went back inside the moment the car disappeared from view.

But it was the second man who was of interest, blanketed by the dry grass.

Had anyone else seen this man, they would have taken him for a local. A rancher on any of the wide, sprawling pastures across the state of South Dakota. His skin was bronzed and weathered from the sun, with freckles so dark they were nearly black speckling his arms. His build was slim and his muscles long and ropy. Thick veins laid roadmaps over the tops of his hands and stretched over the side of his arm. There was no doubt he was a laborer. It was here he belonged, outside of the city, where it was typical to see a man who worked long hours outdoors.

Even the gear he had on him today were favorites of the townsfolk: While his underclothes were dark, he wore a hooded cammo jacket over the top of it, keeping him cloaked in the brush from those who didn't look too closely. His rifle was a simple .22. It had a strap which he could use to sling it across his back, but at that moment it was instead held close to his side with barrel carefully kept up out of the loose, dry dirt. It was not weighted down with a scope, but that didn't bother him. He had been bringing down game since he was 10 years old and didn't need the aid. He was hoping to use his knife instead, besides; a small stag pocket knife folded up and out of sight.

If anyone saw him on his way here or back, they wouldn't pay this man any mind. He was only there to hunt whitetails, perhaps. To drink some beer and shoot prairie dogs, perhaps. To pop some cans off a stump or fence post, perhaps. To creep into a house and slit a man's throat while he slept, never. He would be able to slip in and out of South Dakota unnoticed.

From a distance it was possible even Bobby would have mistaken the man for a local boy. Up close it would have been clear-his eyes would give him away to those who knew how to read them. They were the eyes of a hunter, but not of the kind who tracked deer or even mountain lion through the Black Hills. They were somber and knowledgeable in a way that those who hunted for sport or food or any reason beyond pure survival could not be.

The man had surveyed the land four times before Dean ever left that morning. He had crouched down low to circle the perimeter at 1 A.M.. At 2 he had crept back and forth across the property. He had sneaked in close, snake-crawled his way through the junkyard, creeping in and out between the cars. Peering in through the windows to see if there were any easily-accessed weapons. It was 4:30 by the time he had finished his search and determined the fastest ways through the maze of junk in the yard, should the fight be taken outside.

He crawled his way back to his lookout spot, where he'd left only his water bottle. He picked it up and took a drink as he settled back down into the grass. The sky was fading from coal to a deep purple, like a bruised but healing black eye, and he did not feel safe in the open any longer.

He wasn't expecting Dean to drive away without Sam in sight that morning, but it heartened him. He wouldn't have minded killing Dean, but fighting three hunters alone was too near a suicide mission for his liking.

He wondered idly how Dean had said goodbye to his brother as the roar of the Impala's engine died away. It was only the last moments with someone that mattered, that would shape how you remembered them.

He hoped Dean's memories would be good ones.

Still, it should be said that the man didn't creep down straight away, and the truth of the matter was he had no intention to. Whether Dean was there or not, he knew the value of stalking his prey. He was a man in his early fifties, and any hunter who had lived to be that age knew the patience truly was a virtue. It was something the young hunters, especially those not born into the business as he had been, never got a chance to learn.

It was even more important to keep in mind now. He'd slain his number of human-like monsters before, but Sam would be the closest he ever got to true murder.

He didn't feel this way because he thought of Sam as a man. He did, he guessed, in an an almost abstract sort of a way. It was the only way to think of it, really. You couldn't get lost in morality with a job like theirs. Besides, it didn't matter now. No, he thought of it as murder only because he knew Sam's death would cause the crippling, revenge-seeking kind of grief that monsters' never seemed to. It would have a tangible impact and he would have to prepare for it. There would be Dean, his family. There would be other hunters, like Bobby. And there would be the typical involvement of the law. And the lawmen would be the only ones who might ask questions first.

That was made it especially important to stay inconspicuous. Particularly as, in a small town like Sioux Falls, even the least shocking murder could get top story coverage in the local news for weeks on end.

His best opportunity to get away with this kill would come at night, when Bobby and Sam (and Dean?) would be curled up in bed, vulnerable. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was enough of one that he could see the end, Sam dead and himself victorious, clear as day behind his eyelids. The thought made his heart thrum with anticipation and filled him with premature adrenaline. His excitement was such that he sat in complete silence staring at Bobby's house for nearly two full hours without moving so much as an inch, never growing tired of the wait.

At 6:54 A.M. he'd finally taken in enough of the house that he thought to take a break.

It always seemed that way, just when your senses dull something happens to catch your attention again.

Sam Winchester burst out the door.

The hunter tipped his head.

Even from this far away, the man could tell Sam looked agitated.

He pulled a set of binoculars from his pocket and lifted them to his eyes. They always, obscurely, made him feel silly when he used them even though they functioned well; they were small and compact, not the kind military specialists used in the movies. They made him feel like a birdwatcher who wore shorts and socks with sandals, or some posh asshole at the opera.

He studied Sam's face, his movements.

It was hard to think of anything but a man when you could read the grief in someone's eyes.

He put his binoculars down and lifted up his gun.

He knew from the get that he wouldn't shoot. His car was a full quarter of a mile away. He'd only brought his gun in case this went sour and turned into a massacre instead of a murder.

But nothing turned a man to a monster faster than putting him in your sights.

His daddy had told him when he was a young boy to aim for the chest. 'Everyone wants to get the head,' he'd said. 'Head shots are impressive, but they aren't practical. Heads are small. Center mass, son. Anywhere here,' he had waved his hands over his chest, his stomach, 'will bring a man down. Never go for the head unless you got the time- time to get it right, or time to fix your fuck-up if you miss.'

He aimed between Sam's eyes.

He had the time.

He mimed pulling the trigger. "Pow," he whispered to himself.

He kept his gun trained on Sam's head, tracking the movements, until Sam gave a great heaving sigh and went back inside.

Then he lowered his gun and quietly disappeared to get himself a cup of coffee.

:-:-:

The fight with Bobby turned out to be a strange one.

"That thing in your head, whatever it is you got in there, is like a spoilt egg. Whatever comes out is gonna be rotten. And here you are, itchin' to break it," Bobby said.

"What?" His brow furrowed. "I am not."

"Oh, really?" Bobby folded his arms and stared Sam down. "You know if you keep trying to fix this mess, you're sure as hell gonna tear that wall down. So how come you're all riled up, wantin' to go messing with it when everybody's tellin' you to let things lie? I don't just mean Dean," he added sharply before Sam could interject. "I mean me , you numbskull. Remember? One of the guys you want to square things with? Or, at least, one you oughta want to square things with."

Bobby always struck Sam as positively maternal when he looked at him like this. Because while the heated words cut him fast and deep, it truly was that the look alone that shamed him. Truth be told, being grateful that he had one old hunter's stink eye to keep him in check with embarrassment when he didn't have a mother's frown to do the job was one of the high points of his life. "I do, Bobby," he said quietly.

"Yeah? Then listen to me and leave well enough alone! If someone you wanna fix things with is telling you 'don't try 'cause you'll just foul it up worse than before', and you still want a go at it, I'm thinking there's a bit more to it than just you wanting to patch things up." Bobby sighed again, and forestalled another interruption. "I'm not saying you don't want to do that, too," he said, this part gentler. "But there's somethin' else, too, and that's the part that don't set right with me."

Sam shook his head. "There's nothing else."

It made his insides twist up in anxious knots that felt like guilt, but he's been thinking of nothing but setting things straight since he'd found out about what he'd done. It wasn't a lie.

Bobby blinked so slow it seemed he might just leave his eyes shut. "There's something," he said, tired. He was no longer speaking much of anything to Sam himself, instead his words were just dropping out of his mouth and falling to his feet. "I gotta figure out what it is before I know where I stand," he decided. His meaning was clear: he needed to figure out what it was Sam was up to before he deemed him trustworthy or not.

And there wasn't much of anything to say to that, so Sam said nothing at all. He nodded once.

He still found himself waiting almost hopefully, even though he knew the conversation was over. He stood rooted in place until Bobby sighed soft, turned around, and headed off to his bedroom.

Pretty soon the stale, post-fight air got to him, and Sam headed outside to breathe the fresh air in deep.

He stared out over Bobby's property. It was all dry yellowed grass and hard dirt. Most of South Dakota seemed to be, though he hadn't paid much attention to the scenery on the ride here. He thought he'd heard something about it being hit by drought in recent years, the farmers being frustrated, but it hadn't been unusual. It wasn't something weird or supernatural, there wasn't something about to happen. Sometimes the bad things that happened simply were.

He wished the Impala was still parked out front.

He wanted to go for a drive. Not far, not running away. He wanted to go to the nearest diner and go inside. He wanted to talk to people who didn't know about him or about demons, whose belief in angels was founded in faith instead of fact. He wanted to go for just a minute, without Dean, without Bobby, just take a second and peer in on the world that was still in the dark.

You really think that saying yes, you would like fries with that will help you sort out your life? a voice in his head asked.

He didn't know whose it was. It sounded half like his own internal monologue. The other half, twisted up with his own voice, sounded evil. Like the demons he'd sent back screaming, like Yellow Eyes, like Lucifer himself.

He didn't know who it was. He didn't even know if it belonged to anyone in particular.

It had started after he fell to the ground in Rhode Island and returned nearly without notice, and nearly without care, every few days.

A few drips off a leaky faucet.

He didn't mind.

In fact, the residual effects of Hell, the tiny drips that wept through the crack he'd made, almost put him at ease. The wall held back the horrifying secrets of the two lives he'd lived for over a year, one in his soulless body and one in his bodiless soul. And while he suspected Dean and Cas and Bobby and even Death were all right that it would cripple him to have it all laid bare, he liked knowing as much as he could handle. He liked to remember the flash of pain of his sandpapered-raw soul that had overtaken him in Rhode Island. And he liked the little whispers of what had transpired echoing in his ears, even if he couldn't place the words they spoke.

He wondered if that's what Bobby saw in him now. That he didn't just need to know, he liked knowing it, too.

It didn't matter. His problem with Bobby wasn't about his motivations behind tearing down his mind's wall, not really. It was just a symptom of a disease.

Sam pulled out his phone and into his contacts. He had a million phones with names listed a million ways, but in this one, the name he wanted was at the top: *ICE- Dean .

He looked down at it considerately, but frowned and pocketed his phone without pressing send.

He'd doubted he'd make the call, but he thought it would be because of a flash of annoyance and (an objectively probably petty) decision that Dean didn't deserve to have him call first.

Instead he put it away because of an unidentifiable sense of growing unease. A creep-crawly feeling that was like ants parading across his neck and arms.

His gave it a minute, but couldn't place it. It was almost the feeling of being watched, but not quite. There was something very familiar to it all that was just out of his grasp, that he was missing just one step to figuring out.

No matter what this nameless feeling was, being out in the open had become even more uncomfortable than being inside with only Bobby for company. He headed inside with a glance tossed over his shoulder and no idea what he was looking back for.

After a full half hour of being nervous about whatever had happened outside, a new fear struck him.

Bobby had been inside his room, noiseless, since Sam had stepped out nearly forty minutes before.

With the same mindless fear of a child whose parent had been gone too long, Sam was struck by the sudden gut-tearing and heart-rending feeling that Bobby was dead.

It was so sudden and so obscure that it killed the idea that there'd been anything to be afraid of to start with. He laughed at himself and shook his head. He did check- he went to Bobby's closed door just long enough to hear the sound of life within, just because if something had happened he'd feel worse later than he would for indulging his silly paranoia now.

With little else to keep his mind off things, Sam quietly decided to pore over the old books that were scattered around the living room.

It felt like it had been ages since he'd read a book like this. Reasonless reading that wasn't borne out of having a time limit and hitting a brick wall with local newspapers, databases, and Google. He wondered idly if that was Hell, too. If a small far-away part of him was aware of the sheer amount of time that had passed. If deep down he recognized the length of the hundred years he'd gone without ever picking up a book even if the pain that had made up every day of every one of those years still escaped him.

But he also knew he was over thinking it. He was looking for clues where they weren't.

The very simple answer was just that he'd favored the internet to flipping through books for years now.

He realized then that it had been so long that he'd read not just mythos when there wasn't a case on hand, but read a book at all for the sheer joy of it. He'd tried a few times to read while on the toilet, but flipping pages on the john wasn't the same as reading. You couldn't get engrossed in anything when you were taking a crap and half-planning what you'd do if some monster bust the door down just then.

Reading had to be done right, he thought.

And he was completely right about this, too, even if Dean had given him a look like he was both stupid and pretentious when he'd complained about it once.

Bobby didn't have many of the classics. At least, he didn't have them just lying around his living room. All he had here were books on curses and shapeshifters, the books that fairy tales hearkened to but even the Grimms couldn't capture the terror of.

The only one Sam saw was Dante's Inferno, which was only there for its surprising accuracy in some places, not its literary merit.

Sam thought it was kind of ironic that it was the only one he found and smirked to himself.

He took it back to the couch and began to read.

It had never been a favorite of his, but at first he read it more vigorously than he thought he'd ever done anything in his life. In a few moments, however, it became distractingly tangled up in his own thoughts. It brought him back to childhood and he couldn't drag himself back from it.

It reminded him of the first time he'd read it, in some small town school in Nebraska that they hadn't stayed in for even two weeks. He hated the moving but he'd liked the schools. At least part of the schools.

It reminded him of playing soccer in the fields. Of wearing shorts that ended in a weird spot just below the knee and how he got stark tan lines on his shins, between where the shorts ended and his socks began, and Dean had made fun of him for ages.

It reminded him of a gradual accumulation of months spent at Bobby's house, when Dad was still on the fence about dragging him along for a hunt but Dean was old enough. Dean was eager for it like a dog tracking fox, too, but he still hemmed and hawed about it because not even Bobby could protect Sammy the way he knew he could. Sam had even heard Dean telling Bobby before he left, "Make sure Sammy eats his breakfast." Bobby had chuckled but Dean had been serious about the whole thing, so Bobby pretended he was too.

Living at Bobby's hadn't been normal, but it had been stable. Bobby came to his soccer games, when Dean was always relegated to the task when it was just his family. A couple people in Sioux Falls even thought Bobby was his dad, sometimes, and it pleased him, but he'd mostly said no. Only once he'd said yes, when he'd been angry with his dad about something, and even though he'd been pleased when people thought it, when he'd said it was true his heart dried up and fell in his guilty stomach. He'd prayed hard that night, in a stereotypical way of kneeling by the bed and hands pressed together in front of his face, for his dad to be all right because he didn't mean it and he didn't want a replacement.

But Bobby had never been a replacement. He'd just been a secondary father. Easier to talk to than John maybe (definitely), but never replacing him.

That had been what had almost gotten him killed, hadn't it?

Sam glanced toward Bobby's room, forcing himself to stay still. He was never one for letting things lie, but he knew well enough that this wasn't the time to force Bobby to talk to him.

He held the book tight, unable to think of anything but Bobby's house in hot South Dakota summers of his youth. It seemed hotter when he was younger, and colder too. Once in the winter the power had gone out and they'd wrenched the door open to find the entire doorway blocked with thick white snow. Sam remembered wishing it would have only been on the ground, because it was the tight-packed kind that was right for snowballs, snowmen and sledding. Bobby just went and got his beer from the dead black fridge and shoved the bottles into the snow.

They'd told stories holding a candle under their faces. Not ghost stories, Sam had refused.

Stop it Sam told himself. Stop thinking about it.

He tried to continue reading, but focusing harder only made the images come even faster, sharper. He saw it all in flashes, Bobby's face at a soccer game; his face illuminated by the candle, looking spooky even though they were telling something more innocent than their lives were. He felt one of Bobby's big calloused fingers when he was a little boy, trying to tug the man along. He heard Bobby's voice, not yelling but talking loud at his dad when something had happened to make him cry. He remembered Bobby grabbing him and yanking him away from something, something he couldn't remember past big teeth shiny beneath a coat of spit.

:-:

At some point there was little left to do. There was no one to talk to unless he caved to bothering either Dean or Bobby, and stubbornness and fear held him back from both, respectively. He thought of going for a walk, maybe never stopping. Eventually he'd run through every memory of Bobby that came to mind, once, twice, overlapping, broken apart and pieced back together. Thinking of Bobby made him physically exhausted, but it didn't seem his mind had run the full gamut of miserable contemplation.

He thought of what Dean had said instead-that he'd stayed with Lisa and Ben for a full year. He'd listened, however reluctantly, to Sam's request.

Dean still danced around the subject like it would be the push that made Sam fall the descent to madness, but it didn't take a genius to piece together what had drawn him back out.

It made Sam's stomach ache.

He'd tried to end Bobby's life, and he had ended Dean's.

The two forms of himself, bodiless and soulless both, had a year that he still didn't know the extent of.

The only parts he could piece together had resulted in brutally harming his family and condemning strangers to death.

He wanted the other part. He wanted the memory of his time below. He wanted it to wash over him, not like a flood, but like baptismal water. His soul was the only part of him that he was sure had paid its penance, and he wanted its suffering back.

Sam wondered if he could head out now, on foot, and find it himself. It made a distant sort of sense. Dean could go back to Lisa and Bobby wouldn't have to look over his shoulder inside his own house. Sam wouldn't have to come back- he could cripple his soul and go off like an old dog to die or its tangible suffering would bring some kind of peace. But he also knew this only worked in a hypothetical; in practice Dean would drag the bottom of the oceans to find Sam, and he would demand Bobby's help every step of the way. Even if it wasn't a selfish idea in itself, if he actually made a go of it he'd be the only one who might find peace from it.

So instead of making his way outside and walking until he could catch a ride out of town, Sam pressed his palms into his eyes and laid down on the couch again. He pushed hard, as though he might crush his memories this way.

He couldn't make them fade away then and they pestered him while he was awake, but they disappeared quickly the moment he fell asleep. His sleep was different right now, than it had been. It was solid but restless, though that wasn't the way it felt new. The new part was that, while he'd heard no sleep was truly dreamless, he could never think of anything but black behind his eyes the next morning. He was sure that would end soon. He'd had dreams, deep and vivid, since he was a child, even before they had become premonitions. It was a nice change. He was grateful for it.

:-:-:

When Bobby came out some time later, it was for no other reason than to get a beer from the fridge.

It had been said many times throughout the years that Bobby Singer was a drunk. Hell, it'd even been said he was a pathetic one; the kind some folks around here seemed to expect would wind up sleeping under a newspaper blanket at night.

It had never been said, however, that he was unobservant.

The very first thing he noticed when he stepped out was the silence that filled the house.

The next thing he noticed was a phantom ache at the base of his skull. An echo of the metal pipe that had left him knocked out cold in his own junkyard.

The closest gun he had was a revolver. He grabbed it. He didn't know which gut reaction to trust; the one that said to expect the same wallop that had felled him before, or the one that said to look for whatever was keeping the man who'd done it quiet.

He went the middle road: He looked for Sam, but didn't call his name.

It took only a few seconds for his heart to stop its anxious beat in his throat and settle to its normal drum behind his ribs.

Sam was sleeping on his couch, fetaled tight with knees drawn in and hands protecting his face.

Bobby dropped a sharp sigh, glad no one had been around to see him get so worked up. "You God dang..." he trailed off when Sam twitched, and sighed once more.

Letting his gun hand fall back to his side, he walked over close to the couch and looked down at its occupant. After a moment of silence, he used his free hand to pull the blanket that was strewn over the back of the sofa down to cover Sam's sleeping form.

Sam stirred again, but again didn't wake up.

"Getting rusty, boy, ought to sleep lighter'n that," he muttered to himself as he finally made his way to the kitchen. His words were not without fondness.

A light went on inside his head the same moment one illuminated the bottles of beer in his fridge. Before his soul had gotten plunked back in him by Death, Sam hadn't slept for a year. Maybe the kid still needed his beauty sleep the same way he'd eaten like he'd been starved. Bobby rolled his eyes as he grabbed his drink and knocked the fridge closed. The whole situation was more than he wanted to think about.

Bobby pulled the nearest chair back with his foot and all but threw himself into the seat. He stared ahead at the shadowed wall, eyes unfocused and taking in nothing. He was in a daze until, several sips in, he realized he hadn't even turned the lights on when he'd come in the room. Wasn't this a sorry sight, he scoffed at himself internally, an old man sittin' in the dark with a gun in one hand and a drink in the other.

This seemed only to bolster him.

He took another drink, longer this time, more deliberate. Then he swung his hand up so it laid, gun held loose, on the length of his thigh.

:-:-:

The man who came to kill Sam Winchester didn't spend much of his day away from Bobby's house.

The first thing he'd done had been to go to the nearest gas station. While he was there, he topped off his tank. He didn't need to. He knew exactly how much gas he had and how far it would take him after his job was over. Just the same he was glad he had; not only was it better to be safe than sorry, an idea struck him as he hung the pump back up.

He shelved it in the back of his mind walked to the store to pay for his gas. He gave his hood a tug up just before he stepped through the door. The store had large windows unobstructed besides a sign taped near the bottom (Hiring friendly cashiers! Inquire within!) and big glass doors, and even if he couldn't see so much of it without taking a step inside, the store was small. It was easy to work out where the camera would be, lodged up in the left-hand corner near the Employees Only room. He could avoid it without being conspicuous.

Slapped in the middle aisle was a coffee machine, next to a rack of slowly-cooking hot dogs. While poured himself a cup of coffee he looked them over. They were shining with grease and their browned leather skin said they were old, in no way worth the $1.39 the tag on the machine said they cost. He got one anyway.

He paid for it all in cash. He felt more fiscally responsible than most people were these days; he used a credit card only in emergency.

Of course, none of the cards he had were in his name, so maybe that didn't matter much.

He checked on his idea only once he parked his car back in the safe space a quarter mile from Bobby's house. By then his hot dog was gone, but he continued to nurse his cooling coffee.

He popped his trunk.

Inside there wasn't much. Even the inside of his car wasn't armed to the teeth: a pistol stashed beneath the driver's seat, a bottle of Aquafina filled with holy water next to a silver-bladed butterfly knife in the center console, and a crucifix dangling from his rearview mirror were all he needed to feel safe. On the floor in the back was a gray metal lock-box, the key for which hung from a gold chain around his neck. Though he went all over the country killing monsters and the people they inhabited, in this box were the only things he felt he'd be unable to explain to the police, and while they facilitated his kills they were not harmful. For it was filled with license plates from every contiguous state, bought off of a friend who exported cars to Lebanon.

Only the South Dakota plates were missing.

The trunk, however, was exactly what newscasters recommended every year before winter storms. There was a box filled with emergency rations, a blanket, and the other 11 bottles from a case of Aquafina. There was a bag of road salt, rope, a toolkit, and a small handful of nondescript odds and ends that seemed to have ended up there only because he had no other place for them. While the only true weapon he had in his trunk was his .22, which he pulled out and slung over his body, the hammer that lay free from its case had a head of iron, and all the tools had received the blessing of a priest.

'Please, Father,' he had said, many, many years ago. 'I'm a carpenter. Last month I nearly died on the job, an accident, I fell and-' he'd shaken his head. 'I nearly died. Bless them for me?'

The Father had. Minutes later, he'd gone to the church down the road to confess to another priest about lying to the first. 'I told him I was a carpenter,' he'd said.

Most of it was true. He had had an accident on the job and nearly been killed. He'd been unexpectedly thrown thirty feet in the air, stopping only when he'd struck a tree. Unable to move, worrying he'd been paralyzed, been saved by the skin of his teeth by his partner. He'd been laid up for nearly a week. He'd gone so stir-crazy being unable to move he'd decided Sonny Bono's death was a conspiracy, that the skiing accident was covering up some monster-hunt gone wrong like his own.

It'd been a hard week.

All he pulled out of the trunk now was a piece of clear, thick plastic tubing. He set it over his shoulders.

Then he closed the trunk and began his hike back to Bobby's.

:-:

Once there, it was several long hours of waiting.

Waiting for the Impala to reappear.

Waiting for Sam to come out again.

Waiting for Bobby to come out for the first time.

Waiting for things that didn't happen.

He almost wished he'd had a book.

The only interruption came as the sun was setting almost ten hours later, by way of a phone call. His contacts held ten numbers, and nine of them were to his own other disposable phones. The only real one belonged to the one person so important that he might not want to waste time punching the digits in by hand. It was his partner, under the name Mom. Their phones could be thrown away if it came to it, but even names could be traced. He doubted his long-dead mother would mind.

He looked around for anyone to appear, then scooted a few feet backwards to take the call. A rise in the dirt made him unable to see the house, and he hoped it would offer the same protection to him. "Hey," he said softly when he picked up.

"Hey," the distinctly male voice answered. "All quiet on the western front?"

Code for, Are you free to talk?

"Yeah," he said. "I'm alone. Another couple hours, I think. I'll be done by midnight."

"Not going to be any problems?"

"I'll handle it," he assured. After a thoughtful pause he said, "Jim, his brother left this morning. Dean. He's not back yet."

"You think that means something?"

He shrugged even reflexively. They were so used to each other's manner that he was sure Jim could hear it, but he elaborated for the sake of conversation. "I don't know. It means one less person here, that's as far as it matters to me." He thought more than that. The lights hadn't been turned on yet, at least none he could see in the windows, though it was getting dark quickly and the thickness of the sky made him think tonight would be a moonless one. Maybe they were turning in early tonight and setting out after Dean before sunrise.

"Yeah, well. Be careful, anyway," Jim said. "Remember, I'm not there to save your ass."

"Yes, Mom," he answered, amusing himself more than the man on the other end of the line. "I'll catch up to you tomorrow."

"Okay."

They both hung up at the same time. He pocketed his phone and crawled back up on top of the mound of dirt.

He watched the house for a few minutes more, but the phone call had re-excited him, and with no movement for the past ten hours he decided it was unlikely to happen in the next five minutes. He unzipped his jacket and set it on the ground next to him to lay bare the darker clothes underneath, to fade in with the night more than with the ground.

This run was a fast one, so he didn't pick up his gun as he ran the length to the yard. He took only his knife and the length of tubing.

He kept his eyes fixed on the door as he made his way down to the lot of cars parked in front.

He looked over all of them, but most seemed to be useless. They were tireless with hoods popped up, rust worn straight through the metal in spots. The only one he decided had a chance of running was the old Ford truck, parked closest to the house. He pressed in close to it as he opened it up to him, took off the gas cap, and shoved one end of the tube inside. The other end he took into his mouth. He inhaled as though it was a massive straw, a novelty one for children with his cheeks hollowed out just the same, until he took in a mouthful of gasoline.

He sputtered as he spit the tube out. Not loudly, but sharp enough in the stillness of the night for him to look over his shoulder.

The gasoline continued chugging out of the car onto the dirt. It was so regular, chug, chug, chug, that it seemed to have a heartbeat, pulsing its blood out beneath its body. He knew its death could take a while, and if anyone peaked out they'd be more apt to see a man than a piece of clear tubing dangling from the side of the truck. He left it to drain and went back up to his post to wait.

It was two more hours of waiting for a light to come on in the window before he decided it was time.

:-:-:

Bobby found himself peaking in on Sam frequently through his next two beers.

It wasn't in any serious sort of way. He'd just take a few steps in to the room and look over him for a minute before returning to his seat. Once he readjusted the blanket.

That time Sam didn't even stir.

Bobby thought on it a little more. It was hard to wrap his brain around any of it, but the part that unnerved him the most was easy enough to figure out. It wasn't even the part where Sam had tried to blood sacrifice him like he was some screaming virgin. He wasn't crazy about that part, but it wasn't even that. The thing that really gnawed at him was it had taken a full year and an angel's hand inside Sam's guts to put two and two together. Dean had been quicker on the draw, but even he couldn't pin it down, not all the way.

But he'd dismissed it entirely. He didn't know much about Hell, at least not the gritty details of it, but he'd figured it had to knock a screw or two loose. Sam had passed all the tests he knew to give, including the one that couldn't be checked with holy water or blades of silver.

"Don't tell Dean," Sam had said. "I want him to have a real life."

That had been the point that Bobby had needed some convincing on, Sam needed to go on a bit about Lisa and Ben, but it had also been the clincher that said Sam was the real deal. It was then he'd hugged Sam, and not a moment before. "Glad to have you back, Boy," he'd said.

Sam had returned the embrace awkwardly, patting him on the back and waiting for him to let go. It wasn't like Sam had been disgusted by it, though, more like he was confused by the pure existence of affection.

Truth be told, that made sense. Things weren't all that lovey-dovey down in The Pit.

If Sam hadn't been quite himself even past the point of being standoffish, Bobby figured that was to be expected. Being Lucifer's chewtoy for no matter how short of a time, well, he figured he ought to be grateful Sam had it together as well as he did.

But even if he could explain why it had happened, it didn't excuse the fact that for an entire year Bobby had drawn a wolf in sheep's clothing into his flock.

And it didn't change the fact he wasn't sure if he could ever know who Sam was. Not 100%. Sam still had the same reasons for breaking down he did a year ago. That wall would crack, it had cracked already. If the effects didn't kill Sam outright, they were sure to change him- but so could shapeshifters, demons, any number of monster that wanted to crawl inside a Winchester, and there must've been thousands that wanted their go at the boys. They would never be able to tell if Sam was Sam or a bloodthirsty husk of Sam, and he knew now that even if he went through every test in the book every time Sam's body walked through his door, the only thing it would prove was that it wasn't something he could test for.

Bobby rubbed his eyes and took another drink.

He wondered if he shouldn't just cut his losses and turn them both out, at least until this whole mess was over.

They'd be dead in a week without me around he decided, and somehow, at least right now, it was just that simple. That was that, he didn't think about it anymore.

It was half a bottle later that he heard movement in the living room. It was the kind of sound that came when a person was trying hard for silence, trying to avoid all the squeaky parts of the floor.

Aw, Hell he thought. It figured for Sam had slept all day to make a run for it at night.

Bobby took another drink and stood up. A bitter little part of him wanted to say let him go if he wants to so bad, but it wasn't large enough to even have a voice, never mind an actual say in the matter.

He walked back out to the living room.

Instead he saw the back of a man. There was a clear outline of a rifle in his left hand, but it was the knife in his right that seemed to be looking for action. His grip on it was adjusting and readjusting as he slowly moving around the couch, looking for the right approach.

It struck Bobby as almost surreal, but neither that nor the beer filling his belly was enough to slow his reflexes.

His gun was up and he was in front of the couch and in front of Sam so quickly he almost didn't know how he got there.

It was there he saw the man's face. Recognized it but aimed at it just the same, unflinchingly.

Bobby jerked his head fast to indicate the weapons held in the man's hands, but never broke his gaze.

"Drop 'em, or I drop you," Bobby said. His eyes sure were bright for being so narrowed.

It was at Bobby's voice that Sam woke , and it was Bobby's face behind a gun that Sam saw first when he opened his eyes.

Sam was already through a sleep-muddled, "Please, Bobby...," before he realized that Bobby's gun was trained past him, at the third man behind the arm of the couch.

"Bob," the man said, now. He lowered his gun, but not all the way. Not even half the way. It was just a hunter's way of saying he heard, he understood the position but he respectfully disagreed. "Maybe we should go talk this out in the kitchen. Yeah?"

Sam was watching the stranger now, but he heard Bobby make a noise so disgusted he could picture it on his face. "Pete, you fix to kill a man, he's the only one you owe an explanation."

"You know him," Sam interrupted dazedly, turning his head back to Bobby.

"Yeah, I know him. We ain't friends," Bobby muttered back without shifting his gaze. "Wouldn't expect him to come breakin' in to gank my houseguests, either."

"Look..." This man, Pete, chewed his lip. He was doing calculations in his head without trying to hide them, openly figuring out how he could get this to work in his favor.

No one ever so blatantly weighed how to get out of a situation alive if they actually thought there was a chance no one would get killed.

Finally Pete continued, eyebrows raised in earnest. "I don't have a beef with you, Bobby. Just Sam. I know you've been holed up here playing librarian to him and his brother for God knows how long, but you got your connections. You must've heard the things people are saying about him, and they aren't wrong. If you stay loyal to Sam Winchester, you're going to end up dead."

Bobby was thinking about it. Sam knew he was thinking about it, and it wasn't like anyone could blame him. Who wouldn't think about nearly being murdered in your own home by the very man you were protecting? Of being knocked out, hauled inside, and bound to be sacrificed (the man waiting until you regained consciousness, letting you see your own demise, wanting you to see he was your executioner). Yes, Bobby thought about what would have happened if Dean had walked in just three seconds later. If instead of saving him, Dean helped Sam get rid of his body instead- if push came to shove, Bobby was sure Dean would take a living, soulless brother to a dead old, hunter.

Yes, he thought of all of it.

But his eyes didn't waver. His gun didn't waver. And for all his thought, his voice didn't hesitate. "If that's what it comes to," he said. "Figure I've stayed past my expiration date, anyhow."

Sam kept his eyes fixed on Bobby. He looked for a sign, something that said get a weapon, or even just move it but the only one there was just telling him to stay still. He owed it to Bobby to trust his instincts, and he didn't move. He felt he so owed Bobby his stillness that he barely even breathed.

There was something that stayed their hands for so long. There must've been. Some of it was the regret of having to kill another hunter, but for Bobby it must've mostly been about information, because the next words out of his mouth were, "You alone?"

"Here, yeah." There wasn't any reason to lie about it. " But there are just as many people who want him dead as don't. More, probably. This isn't-I'm not threatening here, I'm just telling you, flat out. Both of you," he added to Sam as an afterthought. "They'll come if you kill me."

Bobby's head barely moved when he nodded, but his message came through loud and clear just the same. He believed. And it was irrelevant. "I raised this boy as much as his daddy ever did. He dies, it ain't gonna be under my roof. Don't matter how many come." It was still hard to kill a man after all this time. Maybe he had to give warning that he was going to. Just a little, and just because he knew he had the advantage; he wouldn't have bothered if there was a chance he'd lose. But gun already drawn and trained and finger on the trigger, they all knew he already had it. They all knew how it was going to end even if Pete hadn't quite accepted it. Time to quit yapping. "Well c'mon now. You're feeling froggy, jump," Bobby said to push this strange stalemate to the end they knew would come.

Pete sighed. "You're backing the wrong horse, Bob."

That was it. There was no fanfare. No announcement. When Pete lifted his gun it was to shoot Sam, not Bobby. Sam's death was the one he came for. He believed in finishing a job once started.

Bobby's gun went off before Pete's could move the four small inches it would've taken to take aim.

Sam rarely flinched at gunshots, but he did then.

Beyond Sam's quick gasp, there was no sound besides Pete's body hitting the floor. It was funny how much different dead weight was than live weight. How much heavier it was than a man who just tripped and fell on the sidewalk.

The silence of death was just as funny as its sound. It was unique. It was the only kind of silence that could remain even if everyone in the room started talking seconds later. There was a natural kind of noise that came straight from a person's energy, their soul, something, and it always took a minute or two for a room to find its balance again once it was gone from the world for good.

"You didn't let him kill me," Sam said. It actually nearly hurt to rip his eyes away from the still warm, still nearly-living corpse, but he had to see Bobby's face.

Bobby scoffed. "No, I'm just gonna let you bleed to death on my couch. What'd'ya take me for? You sure Death didn't stuff your common sense behind that wall of yours?"

"No idea," Sam answered, breathing out a laugh. His smile didn't reach his eyes but it was sincere.

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Sam sat up completely and looked down at the old, worn floor. Bobby took seven steps, Sam counted them silently in his head, going a long way 'round to stand by the body and look down at the dead man he'd once known.

"Thanks, Bobby," Sam told the ground.

He looked up when Bobby's hand squeezed his shoulder.

I'm sorry, he wanted to continue when their eyes met. But there were some things words were insufficient for, so he said nothing.

Bobby's mouth stretched out into a line that was as reassuring as any smile. "Help me with this mess. He might'a been a Grade-A ass, but he was still a hunter."

Sam nodded.

Together they carried the body to an empty patch of dirt outside.

Then, with the same reverence as any funeral would have, Bobby went to get the salt and Sam the gasoline.


End file.
